


years later, there are books

by dirgewithoutmusic



Category: Leagues and Legends - E. Jade Lomax
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24587626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic/pseuds/dirgewithoutmusic
Summary: Grey finds Jack and George most in folklore, in collections of ballads and in dry academic patronage of quaint back-country culture. He finds Sez in pamphlets, quoted baldly or badly– a demon, a hag, a savior, a rebel, a firebrand. He gets extras of those and sends them home to Sez’s wife, Sally-Anne, who laughs herself as silly as Sez does about it.
Relationships: Sezly Ruedotter/Sally-Anne
Comments: 17
Kudos: 70





	years later, there are books

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: Laney/Rupert + Future. 
> 
> This ended up being more about the scooby gang as a whole than just those two but whoops
> 
> ...does it count as fanfic if you wrote the original novels

Years later, there are books. 

Grey starts collecting them, when he finds the first one, and keeps them on a special shelf in the library: a university paper, mailed by George, that cites some of Laney’s methods in a discussion of Elsewhere Theory; political treatises in other cities, condemning Rivertown or using it as a call to action. 

George laughs, when she sees the shelf on a visit. She’s still got dust on her boots, half a PhD and a field camp behind her up north. “You want books?” she said. “I’ve got books. You seen the sort of things they’ve written about the Giantkiller and the Dragon Slayer, the Pied Piper and the Merry Men?” 

Grey perks up. “Nonsense? Is the sort of things _nonsense_?” 

“Utter, utter nonsense,” she says, and promises to steal him some books from the Bureau Library. “They owe you,” she says, when Grey complains. He’ll always complain. She’ll never stop stealing him books.

The shelf becomes a bookshelf, becomes a wall. Jack doesn’t read them, or Laney, but sometimes Rupert will read bits aloud to Sez for the comedy of it. 

“Ms. Sezly Ruedotter, Queen of Rivertown,” Rupert quotes, and Sez almost bowls over laughing. She’s still got a headache from arguing with a committee all morning. Surely if she was a queen of this beautiful rat’s-ass town there would be less committees, or at least maybe they’d listen without her having to stand on a table. 

Grey finds Jack and George most in folklore, in collections of ballads and in dry academic patronage of quaint back-country culture. He finds Sez in pamphlets, quoted baldly or badly– a demon, a hag, a savior, a rebel, a firebrand. He gets extras of those and sends them home to Sez’s wife, Sally-Anne, who laughs herself as silly as Sez does about it. 

Years later, there are books. 

Years and years later, Rivertown is a city of sleeker automobiles, of elevators and canned music. Cross-country networks of stabilized portals revolutionize trade, communications, and travel. The far reaches of the globe are steps away for anyone with a few coins in hand, and it transforms the way people meet, connect, build, war, love, and live. 

Rivertown is not the heart of the world, nor its greatest cultural light. But sometimes travelers step out of the yellow glow of a portal to stir up the dust of its streets. The river stench rises up on hot summer days. The closest bare grass hills are farther away from the city center now, but they still roll on the horizon. 

The travelers pass a plaque where the first mayoral house of Rivertown once stood. They tour what remains of the Academy, climb preserved stairs up to battered little rooms. 

There are books, and some of these travelers have read them. Some of them are here _because_ they read those books and wanted to see the kind of place those distant legends came from, once upon a time. 

All of them are here, stepping out of a yellow glow, coming from halfway around the world, because once a young woman was told she had no power, and that young woman said _no_. 

Jack is remembered best in ballads. There are books, sure, a few autobiographies, but his story always lives best in campfire songs. George has her ballads, too, but she is remembered best in the studies, books, and discoveries built on the back of her groundbreaking research work on dragons (co author: Bidi Jones). 

Grey’s inventions outlive him, but so does his library, which stands in Rivertown with open doors long after he is nothing but a name on a plaque. Rupert is rarely recollected, except for those quiet few enthusiasts who specialize in efficiencies, in archiving, in city planning, in project management.

Laney is remembered in history books. 

Some of the travelers want to be portal engineers. Some want to be sharpshooters, because that part of her story didn’t die with her either. Some want to live lives they were told they could not have, and they find comfort in her story. 

Some want to invent something entirely new. They step out of the yellow glow of the portal, a new season on their skin, and watch the sparks fall behind them. They think, with something like awe rising in their chest, something like determination, like recognition: _once, this was not a possibility that existed in people’s minds. Once, Laney Jones said, “what if I…“ and the world changed._

Some things are remembered. Some things last, even if no one writes them down or puts them on a shelf. 

In Rivertown, on hot summer days, nearly every dusty street corner has a fizzy lemonade stand. 


End file.
